Amsterdam has broken into the top 10 of Ipsos's Top Cities Index for the first time since the survey was first published in 2013.
Four years ago Amsterdam was in 14th place, the Paris-based market research group said on Tuesday, but this year the capital shared ninth place with Los Angeles. Hong Kong is 14th, well down on its 2013 ranking of 8th.
Amsterdam city council said hotels had 7.2 million guests in 2017, staying an average of 1.91 nights for a total of 13.8 million overnight stays.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, Amsterdam was ranked 10th by members of both Generation X (those born between 1965 and 1975) and millennials (1980-1995), while those classified as Generation Z (those born after 1996) gave the Dutch capital a 9.
The 2017 edition of the Ipsos Top Cities Index finds that New York is the most popular city worldwide, retaining the title it claimed when the survey was first run in 2013.
Abu Dhabi leapfrogged London and Paris into second position, with Tokyo, Sydney and Zurich on the same score in joint fifth.
People in 26 countries worldwide were asked which, from a list of 60 global cities, they felt were best to live in, do business in, and visit. The scores from the three questions were then added together to create the Ipsos Cities Index.
Other European cities making the Ipsos top 10 are Zurich in joint fifth place and Rome in eighth. More >

Maastricht has more shops per head than Amsterdam, but the tourist hotspots of the Wadden Islands are a shopper's paradise, new figures show.
The Limburg capital's 854 shops represent 7 for every 1,000 population, compared to a concentration of 6.4 in Amsterdam, according to statistics published on Tuesday by the national statistics office CBS.
However, the islands have nearly three times as many shops per resident, largely because tourists outnumber locals during the holiday season. Vlieland, with 20.3 shops per 1,000 residents, leads the league table, followed by Schiermonnikoog in 13.8, Terschelling on 13.2 and Texel on 13.1.
The CBS said there are nearly 88,000 physical shops in the Netherlands. Clothing shops represent 18% of the total, followed by supermarkets at 7%, flower shops (4%) and bicycle shops, drug stores, furniture stores, butchers and shoe shops, all at 3%.
Little has changed over the past 10 years the CBS said. The Wadden islands took pole position a decade ago and Maastricht headed the table of the 25 biggest cities. More >

Coffee maker Douwe Egberts has withdrawn an advertising campaign based on young people jumping from bridges after being criticised for featuring dangerous behaviour, reports the Telegraaf.
The coffee brand had been promoting cans of its iced coffee saying – in English – ‘not your parents’ coffee’, with an image of young people somersaulting from a bridge.
But the Dutch water authority has protested that for years it has been advising against doing this.
A spokesperson told the Telegraaf: ‘It looks like fun, but we hope that people do not do this. People have died after jumping from bridges….In the poster, you can see boats to one side. These also take to the water and a sailor cannot always see you if you jump, just as you can hardly see them.’
The organisation pointed out that a drastic change in body temperature from diving into water can be dangerous, as can shallow water or objects like shopping trolleys and bikes on the bottom. People are, reports the Telegraaf, regularly wounded and one has even died.
Douwe Egberts told the paper: ‘Our campaign…is aimed at young people who have fun together. Given the urgent advice from the water authority against swimming in rivers and canals, or jumping from bridges, we will withdraw it as soon as possible.
‘It has never been our intention to encourage such behaviour.’ More >

The national hot weather plan has come into force in the southern half of the country as temperatures are expected to top 30 degrees again on Monday.
The national meteorological service KNMI has issued yellow alert warnings and expects to declare a heatwave by the end of Monday. A heatwave is defined as five consecutive days above 25C including three on which the temperature exceeds 30C.
The hot weather plan has been activated by the public health service RIVM in seven provinces: Utrecht, Overijssel, Gelderland, Zuid-Holland, Limburg, Noord-Brabant and Zeeland. It was brought in to focus attention on people who are vulnerable to extreme temperatures, such as the elderly, those in institutional care and people with long-term health problems.
General advice includes drinking more fluids, wearing thin, loose-fitting clothing and keeping activity to a minimum in the middle of the day. People are also advised to apply plenty of sunscreen and keep in the shade as much as possible.
The official temperature at De Bilt will need to rise above 30C on Monday for a heatwave to be confirmed. It will be the first official heatwave since 2015 and the ninth since the turn of the century. In the whole of the 20th century there were 15 heatwaves, but between 1948 and 1975 not one was recorded. More >

A Dutch safety organisation is encouraging parents to let their children play a little dangerously, reports ANP.
The group launched a campaign on Friday called: ‘with a bit of risk, they’ll get there’, sparking newspaper headlines such as ‘let young children play with penknives’ in the AD.
‘Risky play has a positive influence on children’s physical and mental health,’ says the organisation VeiligheidNL on its website. ‘Through it, they learn to evaluate risk, become self-sufficient and build their self-confidence.’
But, it warns, today’s more protective parents, schools and government mean that children have less experience of managing risk themselves.
Obesity
Saskia Kloet, manager of the programme around growing up at Veiligheid NL, told the AD: ‘We see ever more international publications coming out about the advantages of risky play. Our children are going out less, sitting around playing computer games and struggling with excess weight. This is the reason for our campaign.’
The campaign advises parents to wait at least 10 seconds before telling their children not to do something or to watch out, when a child is playing in a risky way.
‘It doesn’t feel natural, I understand, but bite your tongue for a bit and see what happens,’ she told AD, if a parent sees a five-year-old playing with a pocket knife. She also advised showing children to climb trees but then letting them do this themselves, and handle fire, 'but under supervision.'
The organisation’s website asks parents to answer a quick quiz on whether they would let their five-year-old climb a tree, let a seven-year-old light a campfire or let a six year old go to a park with friends, out of sight.
Risky play
It gives suggestions about how to facilitate children playing at heights, with speed or dangerous substances, in dangerous places, with some rough-and-tumble and out of sight.
According to a survey of around 1000 parents carried out by TNS-NIPO for Veiligheid.NL, says a press release, 79% of parents would be happy to let their children take risks while they played.
Kloet told DutchNews.nl: ‘There are a lot of good examples from abroad such as The Land Adventure Playground in Wales.’
She added that the organisation had not looked at the legal situation in other countries – in the UK, it is an offence to leave a child alone if it places them at risk, for instance.
Beware
But project leader Judith Kuiper told DutchNews.nl that the legal situation is not so prescriptive in the Netherlands, but their campaign is all about nuance. 'You cannot say this is dangerous, and this is not,' she said. 'A child of two should not be left alone by open water, but this might be fine for a child of seven with a swimming diploma.
'We want to tell parents that children can do a lot themselves. There's a tendency in society for children to be more protected, pampered and regulated but in Scandinavia and Canada we're seeing an opposite movement to allow children to be more free and take charge of their own development. This surely makes them happier.' More >